New network offers opportunities to North Country

Alan Moorse Business Review Reporter

The Sage Colleges hosted a demonstration and press conference May 1 at
which educators, politicians and health care providers nearly called the
new Adirondack Area Network all things for all people in the North
Country.

The network is a combination of video, computer and telephone technology
that achieves sophisticated results cheaply, opening the electronic door
for those whose remote locations and modest budgets previously shut them
out of the information age. It brings affordable teleconferencing,
Internet service, even telemedicine to the Adirondack region.

"This network will forever change the way we learn, teach, do
business and get information in New York state," said Jeanne Neff,
president of The Sage Colleges, which is based in Troy.

During the event--which featured presentations from Albany Medical
Center, the Sage campus in Albany, Champlain Valley Educational Services
in Plattsburgh and Franklin-Essex-Hamilton BOCES in Malone--Neff said the
network will carry courses for health care professionals in the sparsely
populated region between Albany and Montreal to the north and Syracuse to
the west.

Albany Med serves the entire region, and providing medical services,
educational programs and research information throughout it is a
challenge, said James Barba, chairman, president and chief executive
officer of the medical center. He said the network "is going to make
all the difference in the world" to his organization.

Albany Med staff sent a high-resolution X-ray from the hospital to the
three other locations, showing how the network could be used in medical
consultations. The video and computer system is portable, so it could be
wheeled to a patient's room, allowing distant relatives to "visit."

Neff said the network also will be the communications backbone of the
University Heights project, a sprawling center of higher education being
developed along New Scotland Avenue by Sage, Albany Law School, Albany
College of Pharmacy and Albany Medical Center, parent of Albany Medical
College.

The Adirondack Area Network uses parts of Bell Atlantic Corp.'s
communications network that are lower-tech and lower-cost than high-speed
fiber-optic lines. Until recently, the lines and switches, called a
frame-relay network, were thought incapable of carrying Internet,
telemedicine and video conference signals.

A team led by David Bonner, director of technology initiatives for Sage,
designed the network around the use of frame-relay, which keeps connection
costs less than $1,000 a month. Other teleconference systems can cost $100
an hour.

A school or health care organization could purchase everything necessary
for joining the network for about $70,000, Bonner said.

Development of the network was supported in part by $1.4 million from
the Bell Atlantic Foundation, which has set aside $50 million to improve
services for New Yorkers, said Lee Brathwaite, vice president and general
manager of Bell Atlantic operations in northeastern New York.

When teleconferencing came into vogue a decade or so ago, it was both
very expensive and of poor quality, two hurdles the Adirondack Area
Network has solved, he said. "What's exciting is that what's
happening here in the Adirondack area can happen throughout the country
and, in fact, the world," Bruno added.

As word of the network has spread, Sage has been fielding calls from
schools, businesses, government agencies and churches interested in
building systems, Neff said.

"Anyone who's interested in communication can use this technology,"
she said.

During the hour-long demonstration, sound sent over the network came
through clearly, and images blurred only when the camera moved quickly.
Speakers' rapid gestures appeared on video monitors with none of the
stop-action jerkiness common in other teleconference systems.

The network is a collaboration by Sage, Albany Med,
Franklin-Essex-Hamilton BOCES, Champlain Valley Educational Services, Bell
Atlantic, RADVision, VTEL, NYSERNet and New York state. More than 50
organizations are members.

RADVision created the technology that allows Adirondack Area Network to
send video conference signals over the frame-relay network. It also
provided a gateway system to allow users to participate in a video
conference with users of systems that transmit over what are called ISDN
lines.

VTEL, the world's largest developer and manufacturer of digital visual
communication systems, provided video conferencing equipment for the
network.

NYSERNet, the New York State Education and Research Network, a
non-profit consortium, conducted research on transmission of audio and
video signals over networks using Internet protocols.